reminds me of what Donald Knuth had to say about academic specialization in Things a Computer Scientist Rarely Talks About:

  There might be some light on the horizon, however.  I predict that in the not too distant
  future, people in acamedmic life are going to define themselves not by one specialty
  area, but by two sub-specialties that belong to two rather different main specialties.
  This means that we'll have a web of interests, in which each person will serve as a
  bridge between different parts of the overall structure.  You can see that this is much
  better than having a tree hierarchy that branches out further and further, with nobody
  able to talk to the people on other sub-branches.  We'll have people that each belong to
  two areas, in two different parts of the overall structure.  Then we'll be able to have
  some hope of coping with new knowledge as it comes along.